July 14, 2010

The Killers - 1946

The Killers, Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, 1946


The Killers, Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, 1946 Giclee Print
12 in. x 9 in.

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A classic, definitive film noir, from a short story by Ernest Hemingway, told in eleven taut flashbacks after a bravura opening murder sequence. Two hit men Al (McGraw) and Max (Conrad) enter a greasy-spoon diner in Brentwood New Jersey, asking the manager about Ole 'Swede' Andersen (Lancaster, in his film debut) - a gas station attendant. The doomed 'Swede' (an ex-boxer), who has been hiding in town under an alias for six years, is warned in a nearby boardinghouse. Indifferent, he expects their arrival and calmly, passively awaits their deadly approach. Insurance investigator Jim Reardon (O'Brien) pieces together and unravels the plot and reconstructs the life of the victim through interviews and detective work. He discovers a complex tale of crime and treacherous betrayal - all revolving around a beautifully-glamorous, mysterious, double-crossing femme fatale Kitty Collins (Gardner) - who sings "The More I Know of Love."

Jezebel - 1938

Jezebel


Jezebel Framed Art Print
16 in. x 22 in.

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Set in the mid-1800s New Orleans, a stylish, classic romantic melodrama about a headstrong, flamboyant Southern belle. To arouse the jealousy of her beau Preston Dillard (Fonda), willful, spiteful, tempestuous Julie Marsden (Davis) thoughtlessly and selfishly insists on wearing a scarlet red gown (rather than a virginal white one customarily worn by unmarried women) to the Olympus Ball - a major social function, defying social customs. She disgraces herself and is jilted by her embarrassed fiancee, who returns to Julie's plantation a year later. Without knowing that her estranged man has brought his new Yankee wife Amy (Lindsay), she surrenders to him. In further scheming, she rebounds and marries Southern gentleman Buck Cantrell (Brent), who dies in a duel unintentionally caused by her. Later, when Pres contracts deadly 'yellow jack' (yellow fever), she heroically redeems and atones for her transgressions by pleading with Amy to nurse his illness during the epidemic. In the final scene, she rides off with him in a wagon to certain death.

The Jazz Singer - 1927

Al Jolson in the Jazz Singer


Al Jolson in the Jazz Singer Framed Art Print
21.6875 in. x 17.6875 in.

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Legendary, revolutionary film, known as the first sound motion picture - literally, the first feature film to utilize Synchronous Sound. In actuality, it was a part-talkie with only a few musical sequences and one ad-libbed, conversational sequence. With Al Jolson in his film debut. Precipitating a split with his cantor father (Oland) and mother (Besserer), young Jewish son Jakie Rabinowitz (Jolson) leaves his home, takes a new name - Jack Robin - and enters show business as a Broadway singer of popular/secular music.

When his father falls ill on Yom Kippur, Jakie takes his father's place in the synagogue and performs the Kol Nidre. Contains the classic line: "You ain't heard nothin' yet!" Tunes include "My Mammy," "Dirty Hands, Dirty Face," "Toot, Toot, Tootsie Goodbye" and "Blue Skies." Academy Award Nominations: 2, including Best Adapted Writing, Best Engineering Effects. Special Award to "Warner Bros., for producing... the pioneer outstanding talking picture, which has revolutionized the industry."

In A Lonely Place - 1950

In a Lonely Place, Gloria Grahame, in a Gown by Jean Louis, 1950


In a Lonely Place, Gloria Grahame, in a Gown by Jean Louis, 1950 Photographic Print
18 in. x 24 in.

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A mature, bleak and dramatic 1950 film noir from maverick director Nicholas Ray - from a complex script by Andrew Solt. World-weary, acerbic, self-destructive, hot-tempered, depression-plagued Hollywood screenwriter and laconic anti-hero Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart), while planning to adapt a trashy best-selling romance novel, becomes the prime suspect in a murder case of a night-club hat-check girl Mildred Atkinson (Martha Stewart). After he invites her to his apartment to discuss the book that he hasn't read, she is found brutally murdered the next morning. His romantic relationship with a lovely neighbor/would-be starlet Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame) in the housing complex grows stronger when she confirms his alibi, but ultimately is put to the test as she becomes increasingly suspicious of his disintegrating self.

The Hustler - 1961

Paul Newman


Paul Newman in The Hustler Framed Art Print
11 in. x 13 in.

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A dramatic, realistic character study based on Walter Tevis' novel. A young, arrogantly-cocky, anti-hero, pool-hall hustler, "Fast Eddie" Felson (Newman), challenges acclaimed, cool, professional Minnesota Fats (Gleason) in Ames Billiards Room in New York City. The naive, talented, and ultimately self-destructive challenger loses. Defeated and self-pitying, he meets and falls in love with another loner - alcoholic, desperate, waifish cripple Sarah Packard (Laurie) - whom he ultimately forsakes. He attracts the attention of slimy, calculating, venal, and repulsive promoter Bert Gordon (Scott). With financial backing from the pimpish entrepreneur, Felson struggles to get back on top - at a great cost to his own self-esteem and soul. Reprised twenty-five years later, with Paul Newman as an older, wiser Eddie Felson in director Martin Scorsese's Color of Money.

How Green Was My Valley - 1941

A compelling, classic, heart-wrenching drama of a Welsh coal-mining family over a fifty-year period, adapted from a story by Richard Llewellyn. Told in voice-over narration and flashback as intelligent and sensitive 10 year-old Huw Morgan (McDowall) nostalgically looks back on a bygone way of life. Huw is the youngest of seven children (six sons and one beautiful daughter Angharad (O'Hara)) in the Morgan family, led by elderly Mr. and Mrs. Morgan (Crisp and Allgood). Tensions in the family grow at the beginning of the 20th century, during periods of labor unrest and workers' strike.

When stern Mr. Morgan resentfully refuses to join a miners' union, calling it "socialist nonsense," the family is split and the older brothers depart for a boarding house. Among other crises and losses that devastate the community, Angharad's romantic love for the local preacher Mr. Gruffydd (Pidgeon) is ultimately thwarted. The film concludes with Huw's understanding of the vanished old way of life.

GoodFellas - 1990

Good Fellas


Good Fellas Poster
24 in. x 36 in.

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GoodFellas (1990) is director Martin Scorsese's stylistic masterpiece - a follow-up film to his own Mean Streets (1973), released in the year of Francis Ford Coppola's third installment of his gangster epic - The Godfather, Part III (1990). It is a nitty-gritty, unflinching treatment of a true mobster story about three violent "wiseguys" [Mafia slang for 'gangsters'], enhanced by the Italian-American director's own experience of his upbringing in Little Italy.

The film's factual, semi-documentary account was adapted from both Nicholas Pileggi's and Martin Scorsese's screenplay - based upon Pileggi's 1985 non-fictional book Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family. Film posters were subtitled: "Three Decades of Life in the Mafia." The real-life story concerned a low-level, marginalized gangster (or 'foot-soldier') of mixed ethnic roots (half-Irish, half-Sicilian) - Henry Hill, who ultimately broke the gangster's code of 'never ratting on your friends', and turned informant for the FBI and entered the Federal Witness Protection Program to save his life by disappearing from view.

The fast-moving, energizing, episodic story, with plentiful profanity (the F-word is repeatedly spoken by Joe Pesci's character), forceful editorial cuts and visuals, shifting points of view, and characters speaking directly to the camera, is told with voice-over narrative commentary by Henry Hill (Ray Liotta). It includes about thirty years in his life, from his teen years as a Brooklyn Irish neighborhood kid to maturity as an adult gangster, covering the years from the 1950s to the drug-saturated 1970s when married to wife Karen (Lorraine Bracco). The additional voice-over of his wife's point-of-view provides even further insight into the all-encompassing culture and lure of life within the 'family.' Freeze frames sprinkled through the film accentuate the indelible, impressionable moments in Henry's experiences.

July 11, 2010

From Here to Eternity - 1953

From Here to Eternity, Deborah Kerr, 1953


From Here to Eternity, Deborah Kerr, 1953 Photographic Print
18 in. x 24 in.

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Based on James Jones' best-selling, hard-hitting novel of on-duty/off-duty military life among recruits in the pre-Pearl Harbor era of 1941 - on the eve of WWII. A combination romance, combat and melodramatic film set at the Schofield Barracks Army base on Oahu. Sensitive bugler Pvt. Robert E. Lee "Prew" Prewitt (Clift) is dealt harsh treatment when he stubbornly refuses to fight for the company's boxing team. The bored company commander's wife Karen Holmes (Kerr) engages in a torrid affair with the good-guy Sgt. Milton Warden (Lancaster) - their embrace in the pounding surf is indelibly imprinted in cinematic history. Pruitt falls in love with a nightclub "hostess" (prostitute) Alma (Lorene) (Reed). Meanwhile, Prew's Italian friend Angelo Maggio (Sinatra) is tormented by sadistic stockade Sgt. "Fatso" Judson (Borgnine).

The French Connection - 1971

The French Connection


The French Connection Framed Art Print
16 in. x 22 in.

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An action-packed, intense, gritty crime thriller filmed on location and based on a true story, starring two hard-nosed, vulgar New York City police cops who expose an international, heroin-smuggling operation based in Marseilles - headed by suave, elusive, mastermind crime boss Alain Charnier (Rey). Passionate, tough, pushy, and unorthodox narcotics detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (Hackman) recklessly and obsessively fights crime with partner Buddy Russo (Scheider). With the breath-taking, famous elevated-railway scene of Doyle fearlessly chasing a runaway train - with Charnier's henchman Pierre Nicoli (Bozzufi) in a borrowed car while narrowly dodging traffic and bystanders.

Frankenstein - 1931

Frankenstein 1931


Frankenstein 1931 Limited Edition
27 in. x 41 in.

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The classic horror film, adapted from Mary Shelley's famous 1818 novel, from the great director James Whale. With his hunchbacked, twitchy assistant Fritz (Frye), fanatical mad scientist Dr. Frankenstein (Clive) steals bodies from graves to assemble a creature - a mute, lumbering, flat-headed and browed Monster (Karloff) with visible facial scars, bolts in his neck and sunken eyes. Frankenstein shouts: "It's alive! Alive!" during the fantastic creation scene in his castle, when the hulking body comes alive with electricity harnassed from lightning. The revived, childlike brute with a criminal brain is misunderstood, and while playfully tossing flowers into a lake heaves in an innocent eight-year-old girl - who he imagines as another flower - to her drowning death.